A woman suffering from multiple sclerosis appealed to Parliament yesterday after losing her landmark attempt to clarify the law on assisted suicide. Debbie Purdy, 45, vowed to fight on to the Court of Appeal after failing to win a High Court ruling that the Director of Public Prosecutions must make clear the Crown Prosecution Authority’s policy on assisted suicide.

But Ms Purdy, with her husband Omar Puente, said that she was looking to Parliament to review the law that makes assisting a suicide an offence punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment.

And the judges also appeared to throw the ball back into Parliament’s court after ruling that Ms Purdy’s human rights were not infringed by the current state of the law.

Lord Justice Scott Baker, sitting with Mr Justice Aikens, expressed great sympathy for Ms Purdy, her husband and “others in a similar position to know in advance whether they will face prosecution for doing what many would regard as something that the law should permit, namely to help a loved one to go abroad to end their suffering when they are unable to do it on their own”.

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BACKGROUND

• GP ‘told patients he supported euthanasia’

• Man spared jail for suffocating sick wife

• Doctor is cleared of hastening deaths of babies

• Husband who helped wife die found guilty

BACKGROUND

• Swiss clinic has helped 100 Britons to die

• MPs must rule on assisted suicide

• Britain lags in legal assisted suicide

• The right to dignity

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The judges added: “This would involve a change in the law. The offence of suicide is very widely drawn to cover all manner of different circumstances; only Parliament can change it.”

Ms Purdy, 45, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who suffers from primary progressive MS, wants to know if her husband will be prosecuted if he helps her to travel abroad to die in a country where assisted suicide is legal. She said that she did not blame the judges, who were only “interpreting what is said by Parliament”.

But while hopeful that the Court of Appeal would overturn yesterday’s decision, she was looking to Parliament to review the Suicide Act of 1961. “The politicians and leaders of this country are not really giving a lead,” she said outside court.

Ms Purdy came to the High Court in London to try to force the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Mac-donald, QC, to issue specific policy guidelines on the circumstances in which prosecutions for assisted suicide were likely. Such guidelines exist for crimes of domestic violence, and driving and football-related offences.

David Pannick, QC, for Ms Purdy, argued that lack of proper guidance infringed her right to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights. He said that Ms Purdy and Mr Puente, who sat arm in arm in court for the judgment, were entitled to the guidance to enable them to “foresee” if Mr Puente, a Cuban violinist, was likely to be prosecuted if he helped his wife to end her life.

The judges ruled that the Code of Practice for Crown Prosecutors, issued by the DPP, coupled with the general safeguards of administrative law, satisfied human rights convention standards and met the need for “clarity and foreseeability”.

They said that there were special reasons why the DPP had produced specific codes for other types of crime, such as domestic and football-related offences. They concerned “a particularly prevalent social problem”, were “more easily identifiable”, and in those cases “it was clearly imperative that the public should understand the specific criteria that the DPP and Crown prosecutors would employ in deciding whether to prosecute them”.

In contrast the number of possible offences involving assisted suicide was “not large”. The evidence suggested that since October 2002 up to 100 British citizens have travelled abroad for the purpose of lawfully obtaining an assisted suicide. But in no case had a prosecution resulted, “notwithstanding some investigations by the police”.

Ms Purdy said: “I still don’t know what will happen if my husband accompanies me abroad to die. Will he be investigated or arrested? It’s outrageous that people don’t know where they stand within the law. The situation for me and others is a confused mess. I will continue to campaign so that I and others do not have to worry about whether the people we love will face prosecution after we are gone.”

Ms Purdy is a member of Dignitas, the Swiss organisation that operates specialist euthanasia clinics. Now gradually losing strength in her upper body, she plans to travel to Switzerland to end her life if her condition becomes unbearable.

If yesterday’s ruling is not overturned on appeal, and the law is not changed, she believes that she may have to end her life earlier than otherwise might be necessary so as to do so without help, thus avoiding putting her husband at risk of prosecution.

Her primary progressive MS was diagnosed in 1995 and she has been a wheelchair user since 2001.

Ms Purdy’s legal challenge was supported by Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.Sa-rah Wootton, its chief executive, said: “It is not acceptable to defend a status quo which condemns some terminally ill adults to unnecessary suffering against their wishes.”

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